Inglorious Basterds, sign for three glasses.
Cub Scouts salute with two fingers, Boy Scouts with three. I was there and I never had any trouble. Nowadays I cannot raise three fingers (and fold my little finger). My ring finger insists on folding as well. I can make the OK sign, which requires folding the first finger and leaving the other three up, but it means OK, and trying to use it to mean three would undoubtedly lead to confusion.
I am going to have to learn to use my first two fingers and thumb to sign for three, like the Germans do, or at least like the movie claims they do. I don't expect to make much progress on this lesson as I hardly ever need to signal for three, and something like this is programmed in muscle memory and it is going to be hard to overwrite without numerous repetitions.
Inspired by Dustbury.
P.S. Title from the sequence cut out of the middle of the video clip.
I was taught in a conversational German class that you ordered "ein Bier" by holding up the thumb (not the forefinger, as we'd do in the US), so I suspect the differences in the "threes" is true.
ReplyDeleteKind of like what someone once told me was a trick used to catch German spies in the US: ask them to sing the second stanza of the US National Anthem, because almost no Americans actually know it....
'sing the second stanza of the US National Anthem'. That's a dirty trick. :-)
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